Poetry Project for National Poetry Month in April

NaNoWriMo,
or National Novel Writing Month (“Thirty days of literary abandon),
has received a lot of activity and press over the last few years when it occurs
every November. There are even social meetups associated with it where
people join up in large groups at pubs and crunch out fiction.

Did
you know there is now a NaPoWriMo, a National Poetry Writing Month challenge
for April? Where the Novel challenge is to write 50,000 words of
fiction without worrying about editing (just get it out there, man). the poets are challenged
to write one poem a day for 30 days. NaPoWriMo was launched by poet Maureen Thorson back in 2003.

NaPoWriMo
doesn’t get the press that NaNoWriMo gets, partly because poets are
marginalized, yes; but also (be honest) because poets suck at keeping
deadlines. I say this because poets I know suck at keeping deadlines. They love
to insist this is because they beat to a different drum. This reminds me about a story I heard from a man who was defensively insisting his way of working
with the world was correct and his therapist asked, “So how is that working out for you?” Not so good.

Well, get
your pens ready if you have the cajones. No one’s asking you to purge out
polished stones at one poem per day but that's the point. This idea is to just
“get er done.” Get your inner editor to shut the f*&k up for 30 days. Be
fearless. In May, you can edit to your little hearts content.

I’m going to try. And as I’m in the process of testing out Hello Poetry.
Every daily poem I create will be posted on Hello Poetry to be picked over by
the Hello Poetry community. Check
out my posts at this link: http://hellopoetry.com/-mary-mccray/.

More about National
Poetry Month

Each year,
publishers, booksellers, educators and literary organizations use April to
promote poetry: publishers often release and publicize their poetry titles in
April, teachers and librarians focus on poetry units during the month; and
bookstores and reading series frequently hold special readings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Poetry_Month

Need Some Writing Prompts?

• http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/poetic-asides/poetry-prompts
• http://poewar.com/poetry-prompts/
• http://www.litbridge.com/creative-writing-prompts/creative-writing-prompts-for-poetry/
• Poetry idea engine: http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/poetry/poetry_engine.htm

More Ways to Celebrate National Poetry Month: http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41